Rachel Reeves has been urged to reverse her “ill-advised” decision to strip most pensioners of their winter fuel payments, or risk millions of people being forced to choose between turning on the heating or preparing a hot meal.
The chancellor has faced fury from backbenchers, who have questioned how many older people will die of cold as a result of denying about 10 million pensioners the payments.
Jan Shortt, the general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), one of the UK’s biggest campaigning organisation for older people, has written to the chancellor, noting many older people may “not survive to see the spring or any other season” after the payments are cut.
Reeves said she was making “difficult decisions” after she accused the Conservative government of leaving behind £22bn of unfunded commitments that it had “covered up from the country”.
Introducing a means test for the winter fuel payment, where only those on benefits qualify, is expected to cut the number of pensioners receiving the payment from 11.4 million to 1.5 million, saving £1.4bn this financial year.
Shortt said in her letter to the chancellor: “Our members are angered and concerned about your plan to remove the winter fuel payment from older people who do not receive pension credit.
“There are already 2 million older people in poverty across the UK. For them, this means living in damp, cold homes, washing in cold water and not using the cooker, all to save money. At least a further 1 million older people live with precarious finances and face growing financial insecurity.”
She predicted it would not be long before many pensioners fell into “silent poverty” that was not among government statistics “because they are not entitled to a benefit”.
“Not everyone has a full state pension and not everyone has an occupational pension to fall back on. Those just above the pension credit threshold are penalised and struggle on a daily basis with a static income deemed by the government to be sufficient to live on,” she said, adding that the effects of the cut would be worsened if energy prices increased in October, as expected.
The NPC called on the government to “step away from this ill-advised strategy immediately”. Instead, it said, the government should ensure that the approximately 800,000 people who were entitled to, but not receiving, pension credit were signed up, and it should put a strategy in place to make it easier for people to take up relevant benefits more broadly.
Shortt said the pension triple lock would not be enough to offset the loss of the winter fuel payment.
The reported savings of about £1.5bn a year seemed “relatively poor compared to the mass misery that will be caused this winter”, Shortt said. She added:“Evidence shows that cutting the income of older people struggling to make ends meet inevitably puts a further burden on NHS and care services as more are unable to heat their homes and buy nutritious food.”
